Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.

If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application.

Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.

Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.